Several years ago I read a book entitled ‘God’s Trademarks,’ in which the author stated that not a few Believers preferred to hide from God in religion rather than attempt any kind of intimacy with God as their real life. As a result people may make a ‘god’ out of their religion and its routines or manufacture a ‘christ’ who is a legal construct of their own making. But what they have constructed is the most subtle of idols. They are more comfortable insulated from God than they think they would be in union with God.
But our treasure is oneness with God in Jesus Christ. This is our inheritance, our treasure and the abundance that is ours because God as Christ has taken steps to us.
RELIGION FACTORY
Manufacturing religion and hiding in it enables us to produce our own form of godliness while avoiding the inconvenience of the totally holistic life Jesus offers. Many gravitate to their own brand of the knowledge of good and evil – some of which have been trade-marked as a denomination.
THE DECEPTION
That Christ is all and in all is not what some want to hear. To live in the law and its sub-divisions and compartments is convenient to those who prefer a Sabbath-day to a Sabbath life of union with God. The law has always been a method of escaping obligation by contrived obligation which is the manufacture of ‘holiness’ convenient to the self. But we don’t live in obligation in the new covenant of Christ is our life. We live in God so that Christ lives out His life in us. We are liberated from externalities in exchange for becoming life-givers incarnated with Christ.
The adventure of persons whose life is Christ rather than the religion of Christ is joy and an uncontrived outflow of life to all they touch. Having said that I have seen Christian idealogues who are terrified of unlimited life because they have made a sub-life from the denominational kennel in which they live.
DO YOU WORSHIP THE CHRIST OF GOD?
How we live depends on the kind of God to whom we relate. Is He an ‘Unmoved Mover? Is God a version of the ‘We are not amused Queen Victoria? Is the ‘god’ we project onto God a version of stoicism? Is He a projection of the law? Many of these projections are derived from impressions gained from significant others. Or perverted gospels. A God whose essence is the law is a most unfortunate representation of God because an abstraction is less than a person and by definition cannot be God.
NAKED TO GOD
Richard Rohr in his book ‘The Naked Now’ explains how the real self grows in authenticity and glory when it is naked to God. Any form of Christianity that insulates us from God with layers of addition and religion, dulls our humanity and numbs us to the reality of God.
Jeff Turner writes, “Their nakedness, something that God had declared to be good, and something formerly of no concern to them, suddenly became something about which they felt profound shame. They believed it needed to be hidden from God’s sight, and so not only did they cover them selves but they did so with leaves from the Garden’s trees, the very things which they were appointed to work and take care of.”
‘For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory’ Col 3.3,4 NIV.
We can if we are uncommonly stubborn, unteachable and deluded live in our delusions. We may hibernate in our delusion, immune to truth and anesthetised against life because like a bear we preferred our hole under the log religion and the fantastical construct that is our brand to the Real Life of Christ our life. This is our opiate of the people.
But you were born in God and our rebirth in Jesus into Himself has made us one with the Communion of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Adam/Moses were undone by the cross. Your inclusion in God means Christ in you. We are sons and daughters of God by nature. But we are sons in spirit and truth with the kind of grace that is Christ our life when Christ is actually our life. This is the life in the Spirit than transforms you in the flesh.